THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

As more and more wind turbines come on line, especially in rural areas where they should be most effective, problems are popping up about distribution. Put simply the power grid was not developed with wind power in mind.

The growth of the nation’s wind-power supply is evident on a remote stretch of Kansas Highway 23, where the spinning blades of wind turbines quickly surround motorists near the town of Cimarron. The site, which has 57 turbines spread over 16,000 acres of leased farmland, is capable of powering 40,000 homes with 131 megawatts of production.

But Duke Energy and Sumitomo Corp., which brought the project online in June 2012, face significant congestion as they try to bring that energy to the market.

Greg Wolf, the renewables president at Duke Energy, wouldn’t comment on the level of congestion, but he said the bottleneck was noticeable.

“Because it’s new and because there’s variability in wind versus a traditional gas-fired unit, there’s been a learning curve here,” Wolf said. “Not to mention the fact that we’ve added a large number of new megawatts at a quick pace.”

Wolf said deficiencies in the grid and differing state policies on the placement of transmission lines were prime causes of congestion.The Southwest Power Pool, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s regional transmission operator in the area, said it experienced four to five transmission curtailments – periods of high congestion that shut down wind units – per week. Over the past eight months, those curtailments have affected up to seven sites.

“They’ve connected to the system in our region ahead of planned transmission upgrades,” said Southwest Power Pool’s director of system operations, Don Shipley. “Some of the wind farms have seen fairly significant impacts of up to 50 percent of their projected production.”

In other words, a lot of the power those farms were expecting to generate isn’t making it to the market.

Shipley said the electric market and the wind farms were losing money because of the curtailments, as the pool is unable to sell power that the grid is incapable of transmitting.

The build out will follow as fast as state and local policies will allow. And the policies too will follow the grid into the future.